LACK OF OPPRESSION HURTS CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN IKITSUKI, JapanWhen Kinshiro Ichinose was beheaded here in 1622 for believing in Jesus, his last words were, ``The time will come when the teachings of Christianity will spread once more.'' (New York Times)

CHALLENGED ON HIS PAST, SHARPTON COUNTERATTACKS NEW YORKIn a frank and sometimes tense exchange with business leaders Thursday, the Rev. Al Sharpton said that he did not consider Louis Farrakhan to be an anti-Semite and asserted that a (New York Times)

LACK OF OPPRESSION HURTS CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF=

c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service=

IKITSUKI, JapanWhen Kinshiro Ichinose was beheaded here in
1622 for believing in Jesus, his last words were, ``The time will
come when the teachings of Christianity will spread once more.''

He was half right. These days, young people on this rocky
fishing islet in southern Japan can indeed worship Jesus freely and
loudly sing hymns that once had to be whispered. But paradoxically,
nothing has killed off traditional Christianity in Japan like
freedom of religion.

Back in the 1500s, Christianity spread rapidly in Japan, until a
fierce repression began 400 years ago this spring. That sent
believers into hiding, and these Hidden Christians, as they are
called, survived hundreds of years of torture and executions with
their faith intact.

Yet now believers say their ranks are shrinking under more
insidious pressures: televisions, cars and video games.

A faith that endured centuries of unfathomable repression is
collapsing in just a couple of generations. ``I haven't been able
to teach my kids the prayers,'' fretted Yoshiaki Isomoto, 49, a
lean clerk whose heavy eyebrows waggled in despair as he reflected
on Christianity on the rocky, remote island of Ikitsuki.

It was partly Ikitsuki's isolation that protected its Hidden
Christians, and a century ago, 90 percent of the island's residents
were still Christians. Now only a bit more than 10 percent are.

In all of Japan, less than 1 percent of the population are
Christians of any denomination; only a small portion of those are
Hidden Christians.

``I wonder how long this faith can last,'' Isomoto said,
``because there aren't many young people among the believers. They
haven't been baptized yet, and they have no faith in their minds.''

It is a tribute to human ornerinessand to courage and
tenacitythat persecution sometimes sustains what collapses in
freedom. That may be one explanation for why young people in these
rocky islands are uninterested in living the religion for which
their ancestors died.

This paradox may also help explain why the country in Asia where
Christianity may be growing the fastest is China, where religious
persecution is among the most severe. Early in this century,
Christian missionaries could proselytize freely in China but made
relatively few converts. Today missionary work is banned and
worship can be risky, yet underground churches are booming.

``It's ironic that our faith is fading at a time of religious
freedom,'' mused Hisami Taniyama, a postal worker and local Hidden
Christian pastor. ``My ancestors kept this faith despite severe
repression, and I want it to survive further. It shouldn't end
here.''

St. Francis Xavier helped bring Christianity to Japan in 1549,
and he and other missionaries were initially spectacularly
successfulalthough for his first two years St. Francis, because
of a poor translator, inadvertently preached salvation by
worshiping Buddha. Within a few decades, Japan had at least 300,000
Christians.

Hideyoshi, the general who unified Japan in the 16th century,
reportedly toyed with the idea of becoming a Christian but decided
against it after he learned that he would then be allowed only one
wife. Alarmed by the threat that he believed Christians posed to
his rule, he soon banned Christianity, and 26 Christians were
executed in the spring of 1597.

This part of Japan, near Nagasaki, was a center of Christianity
and soon became legendary for the torments used to force Christians
to recant. Christians were crucified, tied up in bags and thrown
into the sea, dipped repeatedly in boiling hot springs and
subjected to what was reputedly the most agonizing death of all:
the torture of the pit, in which they were suspended upside down in
a hole half-filled with excrement, with a light cut on their
forehead, and left to bleed to death.

An hour of this was said to be excruciating, yet some Christians
lingered in the pit for weeks before dying. Some were left with one
arm untied and told that they could save themselves at any time by
simply lifting a hand to renounce their faith.

The centuries passed and everyone assumed that Christianity had
been exterminated in Japan. But when the country reopened to the
outside world in the middle of the last century a French priest was
amazed to get a visit from a group of Japanese who knelt and told
him that they were secret Christians.

Up to 50,000 of these Hidden Christians had maintained the
faith, although it became transformed over the centuries.

``I have a Buddhist altar and Shinto shrine in my house,'' said
Tomeichi Oka, a genial Hidden Christian pastor, as he knelt on the
tatami floor of his living room. ``In the old days that was just
for camouflage, because our Christianity was hidden, but now I
believe in the other gods as well.''

This acceptance of other religious beliefs is common in Japan;
most Japanese identify themselves as followers of both Buddhism and
Shintoism. But this pantheism has led to tensions between the
Hidden Christians and those Japanese who in modern times have
converted to Catholic or Protestant churches.

Because of the centuries of persecution, the Hidden Christians
have no tradition of churches or public displays of their faith,
although some have crucifixes that were secretly handed down from
generation to generation.

When someone dies, a public Buddhist funeral is held, and then
the Christians secretly gather to chant prayersoften in Latin,
still recognizable despite mistakes introduced over the centuries.

``After the Buddhist funeral is held, we tell our God that it
was all a mistake,'' Oka said. ``And then we hold the Christian
funeral and sing the Christian hymns.''

The doctrine of the Hidden Christians is a fascinating example
of how a religious faith can evolve to match local ideas and
history. For example, the bible of the Hidden Christians, published
last year in English as ``The Beginning of Heaven and Earth''
(University of Hawaii Press), describes not a great flood but a
sudden tsunami, and the Noah-like figure survives not in an ark but
in a canoe.

Mary is a 12-year-old girl from the Philippines who studies
hard, turns down a proposal from the Philippine king and apparently
visits Japan. Holy Sacrament is the name of a tutor for Jesus, the
chief disciple is the pope, and Jesus is betrayed by Judas, ``who
eats his rice with soup every morning.''

Later, the Crucifixion is arranged not by Pontius Pilate but by
two different men, Ponsha and Piloto.

Some Hidden Christians rejoined the Roman Catholic Church after
freedom of religion was introduced late in the last century, while
others continued to follow Hidden Christian practices.

Ikitsuki Island is filled with sites like the eerily named
Thousand Corpse Mound, where the authorities executed and buried
Christians. Officials sometimes ordered the heads of Christians to
be buried far from the rest of their bodies, to reduce the risk of
resurrections.

But most of the Christians here were executed on a tiny islet
that today is a sacred spot where water is believed to gush forth
when Hidden Christians repeat their traditional prayers.

The Hidden Christians say that one of their pastors once visited
the spot with a Catholic priest, and that first the priest repeated
prayers to no avail.

``Then I hear that our pastor chanted our prayers,'' said
Taniyama, the pastor, ``and water came gurgling from the rock.''<

SURVEY OF SCIENTISTS FINDS STABILITY OF FAITH IN GOD

By NATALIE ANGIER
By NATALIE ANGIER

Scientists have been accused of playing God when they clone
sheep, and of naysaying God when they insist that evolution be
taught in school, but as a new study indicates, many scientists
believe in God by the most mainstream, uppercase definition of the
concept.

Repeating verbatim a famous survey first conducted in 1916,
Edward Larson of the University of Georgia has found that the depth
of religious faith among scientists has not budged regardless of
whatever scientific and technical advances this century has
wrought.

Then as now, about 40 percent of the responding biologists,
physicists and mathematicians said they believed in a God who, by
the survey's strict definition, actively communicates with
humankind and to whom one may pray ``in expectation of receiving an
answer.'' Roughly 15 percent in both surveys claimed to be agnostic
or to have ``no definite belief'' regarding the question, while
about 42 percent in 1916 and about 45 percent today said they did
not believe in a God as specified in the questionnaire, although
whether they believed in some other definition of a deity or an
all-mighty was not addressed.

The figure of unqualified believers is considerably lower than
that usually cited for Americans as a whole. Gallup polls, for
example, have found that about 93 percent of people surveyed
profess a belief in God. But those familiar with the survey said
that, given the questionnaire's exceedingly restrictive definition
of Godnarrower than the standard Gallup questionand given
scientists' training to say exactly what they mean and nothing
more, the 40 percent figure in fact is impressively high.

More revealing than the figures themselves, experts said, is
their stability. The fact that scientists' private beliefs remained
unchanged across almost a century defined by change suggests that
orthodox religion is no more disappearing among those considered
the intellectual elite than it is among the public at large. The
results also indicate that, while science and religion often are
depicted as irreconcilable antagonists, each a claimant to the
throne of truth, many scientists see no contradiction between a
quest to understand the laws of nature, and a belief in a higher
deity.

The results of Larson's survey, which he conducted with a
religion writer, Larry Witham of Burtonsville, Md., appear on
Thursday in the journal Nature.

Larson did not try to determine whether the scientists he polled
were Christian, Jewish, Muslim or any other creed, whether they
went to religious services or otherwise attended to the rituals of
a particular faith. He merely wanted to see what had happened in
the 80-plus years since the renowned psychologist James Leuba asked
1,000 randomly selected scientists if they believed in God.

Leuba, a devout atheist, had predicted that a disbelief in God
would grow as education spread, and Larson decided to use the
psychologist's exact methods to see if the prediction held.

He polled the same number of researchers as had Leuba and used
the same source for picking his subjectsthe directory ``American
Men and Women of Science,'' a compendium of researchers successful
enough to win awards and be cited regularly in the scientific
literature. He followed Leuba's survey format to the letter, with
the same introduction and the same questions written in the same
stilted language, even enclosing the same type of return envelope.
More than 600 of about 1,000 scientists answered the questionnaire,
similar to Leuba's response rate.

In addition to the question about a belief in an accessible God,
the survey asked whether the respondents believed in personal
immortality, and if not, whether they would desire immortality
anyway. Here there were some changes in the responses. In Leuba's
survey, 50 percent of the scientists said they believed in personal
immortality, a puzzling and inconsistent figure given the more
modest 40 percent belief in God. Moreover, many doubters confessed
to a strong desire for immortality. Larson found that his two
statistics, a belief in God and in life everlasting matched; and
that those who didn't believe in personal immortality had little
wish for it. ``I see this as a healthy trend,'' he said. ``People
have become more consistent, confident and comfortable with their
world views.''

But of the divination that religion was on its way out, Larson
writes, ``Leuba misjudged either the human mind or the ability of
science to satisfy all human needs.''

Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion
at the University of Washington in Seattle, said that because the
questions in the Leuba survey are so narrowly phrased, the results
probably underestimate the extent of religious sentiment among
scientists. Several recent surveys of American college professors,
he said, show that professors are almost as likely to express a
belief in God as are Americans as a whole.

Moreover, he said, when the sample in a study he and his
coworkers are now doing is broken down into specialties, teachers
of the so-called hard sciences, like math and chemistry, are more
likely to be devout than are professors of such softer sciences as
anthropology and psychology or of the humanities.

Since the analysis is not finished he could not give exact
numbers. The reason for the discrepancy may be that, in an odd sort
of way, traditional religious dogma suits the mathematically
inclined mind, suggested George Marsden, a professor of history at
the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. ``It could be that
scientists are used to looking for definite answers, whereas
humanists go into their field because they like to deal with
ambiguities.''

Leuba's survey had an enormous impact in its day. William
Jennings Bryan, a populist Democratic politician and orator, used
the results as ammunition in the Scopes trial of the 1920s,
claiming that they showed a scandalous level of atheism among
scientists and thus proved the dangers of allowing evolutionary
thinking to pollute education.

Larson suggests that the updated survey could be used for very
different ends, to calm public fears that scientists are godless at
heart. Whether the public hungers for the reassurance is another
matter.

``In 1916, when scientists were emerging as the high priests of
a new technological culture, everybody cared about what they
thought and believed,'' Marsden said. ``But the prestige of science
peaked in 1960 and has been declining ever since. Do people still
care whether scientists believe in God? I'm not so sure.''

COMMENTARY: THE CHINESE CHRISTIANS

By A.M. ROSENTHAL<

c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service=@

They knew what they did. When President Clinton and Vice
President Gore opened the White House to visits from China's top
arms peddlers and allowed Beijing's middlemen to drop money into
the political begging bowl, they knew that they were increasing the
power of the world's biggest dictatorship, one particularly devoted
to religious persecution.<

Now they complain about not being fully informed by their staffs
or investigators about donations. Journalists ask what counts in
courts of lawwhat did they know, or why didn't they know?<

But in the courts of political morality and common sense, they
are indicted for having empowered China not just at fund-raising
time but year round since 1993. That was when Clinton made business
deals with China his top priority, not human rights, or weapons
proliferation, or other items outside the cash flow.

The evidence is obvious. Clinton and Gore are neither ignorant,
stupid nor naive. They understand that when you hold out the bowl,
the hand that gives today will be the fist that knocks on the door
tomorrow. They know nobody in a dictatorship interested in staying
off the rack arranges money for foreigners, or pays campaign White
House visits, without instructions from the regime.

But here's some lovely news: Americans are getting fed up with
the administration's passionate courting of China.

They are awakening, sadly late, to the Communists' persecution
of the Christianity that the great majority of Americans practice
themselves. The awareness is creating the first nationwide
constituency to oppose American appeasement of Beijing.

So far, the administration and the China business lobby have
been getting away with a collection of falsehoods about U.S.-China
relations:

An annual deficit of $35 billion in trade with China somehow is
dandy for the United States. Americans will eventually get jobs out
of it, if they wait patiently while forced-labor products flood
them out of the market.

The persecution in China of Christianity and other religions
will not be as easily diddled out of the American conscience once
it takes full hold.

For all dictatorships, free religion means free minds, their
particular terror. Beijing meets its fears as dictatorships do:
arrests and beatings of clergy and worshipersrecently as prelude
to Gore's grand visitand regulations to drive congregations into
officially supervised churches. Millions of Chinese Catholics and
Protestants resist and commit the crime of worshiping together in
their own ``house churches.''

The oppression is reported by human rights groups and the U.S.
government itself. The only mystery is why Americans, Christian or
not, showed such callousness to Christian persecution in China,
other Communist countries and some Muslim countries. American
businessmen may have feared closing off markets or oil contracts,
but that does not excuse them, and certainly not the rest of us.

The time of our apathy may be ending. The letters that have come
to me since I began writing about Christian persecution enrich my
life, and buoy my belief in the importance of people living in
freedom to speak and act in support of victims of despotism.

How to move from attention to action? In New York, City Council
President Peter Vallone is working to end municipal investments and
deposits in persecuting countries. Done nationally in cities and
states, it would amount to scores of billions.

In Washington, there is increased congressional determination to
help Chinese Christians and Tibetan Buddhists, the two major
targets, but no agreement on how to do it.

One approach is to use the tariff weapon, specifically against
imports from China's largest exporter and beneficiary of forced
laborits armed forces. The other is to withhold loans from the
World Bank and the Export-Import Bank, and fight about tariffs next
year.

Failure in Congress to push forward to help Christians in China
would be the China lobby's greatest victory. One letter I got came
from the 11-year-old granddaughter of a famous American politician,
whom she already outwrites.

She is deeply troubled about persecution of Christians. Will
grown-ups keep her waiting year after year for the answer to her
question: What can we do to help?

CHALLENGED ON HIS PAST, SHARPTON COUNTERATTACKS

By ADAM NAGOURNEY<

c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service<

NEW YORKIn a frank and sometimes tense exchange with business
leaders Thursday, the Rev. Al Sharpton said that he did not
consider Louis Farrakhan to be an anti-Semite and asserted that a
grand jury had erred in rejecting Tawana Brawley's story of rape
and racial abuse nine years ago.

Sharpton, speaking at a private midtown Manhattan breakfast
intended to confront doubts about his mayoral credentials, asserted
that he is subjected to a double standard: his career, he
complained, is unfairly framed by a handful of racially charged
incidents.

Sharpton told his audience of lawyers and business executives
that he had been assailed for questioning the Brawley grand jury by
some of the same kind of people, whom he did not further
characterize, who attacked a jury for acquitting O.J. Simpson of
murder. And he said that his long history of working with the Rev.
Jesse Jackson is often overlooked, while his more tenuous
association with Farrakhan is a subject of constant attention.

``It's almost like I have to answer for every black on their
mind,'' Sharpton said after the breakfast. Referring to one of his
opponents, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, Sharpton
continued: ``Ruth doesn't have to answer for every woman she ever
attended a rally with.''

In fact, it was in a deliberate effort to move beyond his past
that Sharpton accepted the invitation Thursday. And he is to give a
speech Friday wrapping himself in the liberal mantle of the
Democratic Party, pledging to oppose tax cuts because they hurt
social programs and urging that legal immigrants be allowed to
vote.

If Sharpton needed any proof that his past and his perceived
ties to Farrakhan would complicate his mayoral efforts, he did not
have to look any further than Thursday's meeting. During a
question-and-answer session, a member of the audience asked
Sharpton if he would ``denounce'' Farrakhan.

``I don't publicly denounce anybody,'' Sharpton demurred. But he
noted that he had never worked for Farrakhan or belonged his
organization, the Nation of Islam.

And when asked by the same man, who did not identify himself, if
he considered Farrakhan to be anti-Semitic, Sharpton responded,
``No, I do not.''

That response was met with startled silence. Farrakhan has
described Judaism as a ``gutter religion,'' has called Jews
``bloodsuckers'' and has argued that they were ``wicked deceivers
of the American public.''

After the session, Sharpton said he based his opinion of
Farrakhan's attitude toward Jews on his personal association with
him. ``I don't feel he's an anti-Semite,'' Sharpton said. ``I know
him. I've talked to him. I've dined with him. I don't find the man
to be privately or publicly what he is projected to be.''

Sharpton said he had fully expected the skeptical reception. ``I
wonder what Ruth and Freddy would say if they knew I was here,'' he
said on his arrival, surveying a white and wealthy audience. He was
referring to two of his opponents, Ms. Messinger and Bronx Borough
President Fernando Ferrer.

Sharpton attempted to focus Thursdayand will again Friday _
on what he said would be central planks of his campaign. They range
from restrictions on police conduct to hiking income taxes on
commuters to opposing the popular idea of cutting sales taxes on
clothing; government needs the revenue, he says. His opposition to
cutting taxes separates him from Ms. Messinger and Ferrer, whom
Sharpton criticized for a politically ill-advised move to the
center.

But Sharpton was reminded again Thursday of the hurdles he faces
in trying to move the spotlight from his political history to his
political ideas.

Richard Wiese, 37, who works a science reporter at Channel 9 and
attended the breakfast as a guest, raised Miss Brawley's name as
soon as Sharpton asked for questions.

``Most people, if you mention your name, know you as the person
associated with Tawana Brawley,'' Weise began. Sharpton
interrupted: ``But who are most people?'' He noted that he had
received overwhelming support from black voters when he ran for
U.S. Senate in 1994. ``The question becomes why do blacks and
others see me totally different? So when you raise `most people,'
you have to talk most WHAT people? Most black Democrats don't see
me that way.''

Sharpton said he saw no reason to disbelieve Ms. Brawley's story
of abuse, although a grand jury dismissed her claim that she had
been abducted and raped by a band of white men. ``I clearly think
that if Tawana Brawley case had gone to a public trial,'' Sharpton
said, ``in my opinion it would have been a different result. But it
didn't.''

At one point, Paul R. Beirne, the investment partner who
arranged the midtown meeting, asked about Sharpton's difficulties
with Jewish voters. Sharpton said such questions came up only
because of his association with Farrakhan. He said that was unfair
and complained that black political figures were always asked to
account for the remarks of other blacks.

Sharpton recalled an appearance with Jackson in 1994 at the Park
Avenue Synagogue.

``He was heckled through his speech,'' Sharpton said. ``Twelve
years after `Hymietown.' After 10,000 apologies. I mean, it's a
situation where we have to have dialogue with the black community
and the Jewish community.''<